(no subject)

[derien]

I love the conversations that have been happening on Holmesslash, recently. I read a couple of fics, today, but a lot more discussions - one was practically an essay. Someone's being a really good group mod and coming up with topics that are getting responses.

Comments

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

They have been good, haven't they? I'm a little bit addicted to the Friday Fives, too. And yes, elena_c is great. I'm pretty much just lurking in the fandom as yet, but there's a lot of good thought and writing out there.


The only thing that's bugging me is Mary Morstan. Because, well, I tend to think she existed. (How the hell does SIGN work, if she doesn't?) And that Watson married her because he...well, "love" is a strong word for someone you've known for a few days only, but because he was deeply in like and infatuation with her: i.e. not because she'd blackmailed him into it or to hide his homosexual affair with Holmes or whatever.

That whole thing about "what kind of a woman lets her man go out and solve crimes and save lives instead of being home for dinner every night? Clearly this marriage is a sham!" kind of pisses me off as a feminist. Like, seriously, it is possible for Watson to have loved both of them. Really it is.

[/soapbox]

There seems to be a lot of cross-migration between Holmes fandom and J&W recently. Very cool.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Like, seriously, it is possible for Watson to have loved both of them. Really it is.


Total agreements with you, here. Of course, that can be expected from me. ;) I started to write a story with Watson at the fulcrum of a V with Mary and Holmes, which (in my head) she supported and Holmes sort of tolerated because he knew Watson had to have something else in his life besides a partner who was always running off into the night. Quite possibly Mary was doing her own thing as well.

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

I started to write a story with Watson at the fulcrum of a V with Mary and Holmes, which (in my head) she supported and Holmes sort of tolerated because he knew Watson had to have something else in his life besides a partner who was always running off into the night.

I guess part of it is that (in my head), pre-Reichenbach Holmes is just not willing to admit even to himself that he has anything resembling emotional needs, and is convinced/committed to the idea that he can't/won't fulfill anyone else's needs. I think that's a big part of what The Sign of Four is about, really, right from the first chapter. Like the bit at the beginning where his idea of hanging out and bonding with his best friend is to talk about himself, his methods, and why his friend's writing/outlook on life is wrong:

"But the romance was there," I remonstrated. "I could not tamper with the facts."

"Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them."

*cough* REPRESSION *cough*

In that chapter, Holmes is being so...Holmes that I generally want to smack him right upside the head, right till the end of that chapter, where he analyzes Watson's watch, and is like, "...Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't realize that you'd be upset to hear about how your brother drank himself to poverty and death." Because that hammers home that a person who that just wouldn't occur to is a person who's pretty seriously alienated from his own humanity, largely by his own choice (or what he's decided is his own choice).

Which doesn't mean that he doesn't feel things. Possibly this is just my own reading, but I have never heard anything in my life more passive-aggressive in context than that "For me, there still remains the cocaine-bottle."

Quite possibly Mary was doing her own thing as well.

Which is why all the jokes about "her own thing" involving sekrit Sapphic affairs with her employer, her friends, Mrs. Hudson's terrier, whatever. Which strike me as funny as jokes, but it bothers me a bit that there's so much "she's not real!" or "she was just a beard!" or "she was a crazy blackmailing hussy who left Watson after screwing half of Scotland Yard" fic and speculation, and not more (i.e., more than...one? That I know of?) fic where she's what she seems to be in canon: an intelligent, kind-hearted and stiff-upper-lipped woman who loves her husband, respects Holmes, and gives a whole lot of herself to support her family and friends (there's a whole little thing in the beginning of "The Man With the Twisted Lip" about how people are always coming to her with their problems). Watson's Watson, effectively.

...maybe I'm just jonesing for a really good triangle/V fic, myself. ^_^

[derien.livejournal.com]

You're much better at reading the subtext than I am! :) Maybe I should practice that a little more, it might make me better at understanding real people.

When I wrote "her own thing" I had more in my mind than potential other romantic affairs (although that did occure to me as well) but also someone I read (in a book, long ago when that was my single most important source of Sherlockiana) suggested she might have had a successful dressmaking business of her own and that they divorced after a while. I think he didn't want her to die because she was, as you point out, such an admirable character. Still, an amicable divorce with someone who's become the last leg of your V is unlikely to provoke the level of emotion tht Watson exhibits when Holmes shows back up after Reichenbach, so I guess she probably dies. :(

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, I'm a whiz at overanalyzing other people's fictional characters. Terribly admirable. ^_^ I just think about this stuff too much, honestly. And once you've got the slash goggles in place, they do a lot of the work for you.

(I do kind of want to write some kind of fic, immediately post-SIGN, with Watson and Holmes still living together at Baker St. while preparations for the marriage go on, and Holmes just being impossibly bitchy and passive-aggressive about it all, without quite wanting to admit why, even to himself. As a matter of fact, I did have something like this half-written in longhand...and then I lost my notebook. I HATE losing my writing notebooks, goddamn it.)

I had more in my mind than potential other romantic affairs

Oh, I know. That's just the way people usually seem to go with it. Isn't there a series where Mary or one of Watson's other wives moonlights as a detective? 'Cause if there isn't, there really should be.

I guess she probably dies.

Well, "The Empty House" says:

In some manner he had learned of my own sad bereavement, and his sympathy was shown in his manner rather than in his words. "Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson,"

Which sure sounds like a death to me. I mean, divorce was not common in those days, and amicable divorce even less so, especially among the respectable professional classes to which Watson belongs. Sad, but there you go.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Which doesn't mean that he doesn't feel things. Possibly this is just my own reading, but I have never heard anything in my life more passive-aggressive in context than that "For me, there still remains the cocaine-bottle."

However, after saying how thick I am re how people say things, even thick me noticed the passive aggressiveness in that!